Arp 212 (NGC 7625) is a small galaxy only about 60 light years away. It is classed as an SA(rs)A pec spiral and by Arp as an unclassifiable galaxy with "irregularities, absorption and resolution". Today most consider it a polar ring galaxy but the ring is not illuminated as it consists mostly of dust and nonionized hydrogen gas though some HII is seen. Those interested in what all this means can go to this link for more info. http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/0808/0808.1696v1.pdf

This one was taken and is displayed at 0.5" per pixel rather than my normal 1" per pixel, putting more stress on image quality. In this case, I pick up detail that Arp using the Palomar 200" telescope didn't. So I had better seeing than Palomar this night.

To make a polar ring a galaxy it is usually considered necessary to have to have encountered another galaxy. Again, none is seen in the area. But it could have happened some time ago. A dwarf galaxy far out of my field of view to the upper left (northeast) is mentioned in the PDF link above as a possible candidate but this is still somewhat uncertain. NGC 7625 was discovered by William Herschel on October 15, 1784.

This image was taken at 0.5" per pixel rather than my normal 1" per pixel. At the time this was processed I was using a 32-bit system limited to about 3 gigabytes of free memory. This wasn't sufficient to work on the entire image so I cropped it down until I could fit it into memory. I need to redo it now that I am using a 64-bit system but as there wasn't much to see in the portion I cropped out I doubt that will happen any time soon.

Arp's image: http://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Arp/Figures/big_arp212.jpeg

14" LX200R @ f/10, L=7x10'x1 RGB=2x10x2, STL-11000XM, Paramount ME